Saturday, August 30th 2003, Suzy and I woke up at 6am, to a cold drizzle
and a nasty looking cold front. We were camped at the Matterhorn Creek Trailhead, and
had hoped to ascend
Wetterhorn,
Matterhorn
(a 13er)
and
Uncompahgre
Peaks during the course of the holiday weekend. However, with the weather looking the
way it did, we knew we weren't going to reach any peaks this day, so we took off down
the trail thinking any hike was better than none, and we would go as far as we could
before turning back.

As we came into view of Matterhorn and Wetterhorn,
peaks, only a couple miles up the trail, we saw low clouds working around the peaks and knew we wouldn't get much
further. While approaching the pass southeast of Matterhorn
Peak, a cloud descended down from the west side of Wetterhorn,
as seen in this first picture. Suspecting it was time to turn back, what we had five
minutes later was even worse than expected.

As the bad weather hit us, Suzy took this shot of me digging
desperately for warmer - dryer clothing, with Uncompahgre in the background
disappearing into the storm. Hit with rain, snow, sleet and wind, we turned back
fast and spent the rest of the day at camp drying out and shaking off a cold
shiver that just wouldn't go away.

Down below treeline, and nearly back to camp, I turned around to see this
winter like view of the area we had just descended from. Technically, it's still
summer, but realistically, winter is just around the corner in the mountains. While I
was prepared for bad weather, the temperature drop was more than I expected, and I'll
have to make a couple adjustments with my gear before the next trip.

Expecting similar weather the next day, we slept a couple hours later
before peaking out to see how things looked. Surprisingly, it looked pretty good with
scattered but breaking clouds and lots of sky and sunshine. We were wasting time, so
we quickly grabbed our gear and hit the trail. While this next shot shows the awesome
view of the southwest side of Uncompahgre
Peak as you see it coming over the pass southeast of Matterhorn
Peak, the shot was actually taken on our way back to get some sun over it.

Only about 15 minutes short of Uncompahgre's
summit now, Suzy starts up the only section of this ascent resembling a climb. You
actually have to grab a few rocks up this steeper loose section to keep from slipping,
but over all, this is just a nice long scenic hike.

On the summit by noon, only four hours after leaving Matterhorn Creek
Trailhead seven miles back, I got a couple more shots: this one looking west and
a bit south, at Wetterhorn (back left) and Matterhorn Peaks. With Uncompahgre
rated as the sixth highest peak in Colorado, it's easy so see the
300 foot
difference between it and Wetterhorn
Peak. The trail from Matterhorn Creek Trailhead passes just south of these peaks
making it possible to hit all three in one long day; however, with our late start,
we chose to save them for a later attempt.

I wasn't sure what these two peaks were at the time, looking west
and slightly north of Uncompahgre, but once I got back home to a good map, I discovered
them to be Coxcomb and Redcliff,
two more Colorado
13,000 foot
peaks.

After our third and final night camped above
10,000 feet,
I took this early morning picture of the
Henson townsite,
one of Colorado's many historic ghost towns, on our way out. We made one last stop
though, at
Lake City
before hitting the road, to enjoy our first good breakfast in four days: egg burritos
smothered in green chili.